o PIr. voiceless fricatives *f, *ϑ, and *x as a result of spirantisation of consonant clusters, of voiceless aspirated stops ph, th, kh, assimilation of aspiration, or PII *s before *u̯ in initial position.

o PII *s →*hin most positions. A source of PIr. *s < PII *sć.

o Double dental law: the “intrusive” *s is kept, the first dental is lost (ruKi-rule does not affect it, cf. Av. cisti- ‘insight’, OInd. cittí-).

o Phonemic *š is found as a result of PII *ćsor the groups PIE *ć/j́+ t.

There are some obvious phonetic similarities between Uralic and Proto-Indo-Iranian, in contrast with Late PIE. The eastern LPIE dialect seems to have undergone multiple processes of phonetic uralisms, since Uralic languages had, in general, plenty of palatalised sounds, but only voiceless stops (Kallio 2001):

· ruKi-rule, as part of the adoption of affricates and sibilants typical of Uralic languages.

· The vocalic merge from Pre-PII to PII, i.e. *e/o→*a, *ē/ō→*ā, seems to have a parallel in the evolution from PFU to Proto-Ugric: *ō → *a, *ē → *ä, *o → *a (in most cases, with some cases of *a → *o), and also *e → *i under certain circumstances (Häkkinen 2009).

Interesting is also the substitution of Indo-European reflexive *s(u̯)á- (unattested in Indo-Iranian languages) for, among other possibilities, the reflexive pronoun PII *tanū́- ‘self’ < ‘body’, comparable with the use in Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric languages of ‘body’ as reflexive pronoun (see below §3.5.1. Finno-Ugric evolution and §3.6.1. Samoyedic evolution).

Loanwords of a non-Indo-European language, attributed to the close contact of Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers with the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), whose language may have been related to the modern Burushaski language isolate, are dated to the period between the Pre-Proto-Indo-Aryan/Proto-Finno-Ugric contacts and the appearance of Indo-Aryan words in Mitanni (Witzel 2003; Pinault 2003, 2006; Parpola 2015).

The following are examples of the adopted words (Lubotsky 2001, 2010):

The phonological and morphological features of the dozens of proposed Indo-Iranian loanwords are strikingly similar to those of loanwords found only in Sanskrit (i.e. after Indo-Ayrans had crossed the Hindukush), which suggests that continued contacts can only be traced back to peoples speaking similar dialects in Central Asia (Lubotsky 1999).

Mitanni Indic shows features of dialectal Indo-Iranian or Old Indo-Aryan, such as diphthongs merged in Vedic Indic, e.g. aika- ‘one’ instead of Skt. éka-. Pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan is therefore supposed to have been spoken in the Middle East, strongly linked to the Mitanni state (16th–14th c. BC). Evidence include (Kroonen, Barjamovic, and Peyrot 2018):

· Names of Indo-Aryan derivation among the ruling class of the (mainly Hurrian-speaking) Mitanni population (Mayrhofer 1982; Witzel 2001).

· Indo-Aryan adjectives denoting horse colours are from the texts of the provincial town of Nuzi on the eastern frontier of Mitanni, including pabru-nnu- ‘reddish brown’, parita-nnu- ‘gray’, pinkara-nnu- ‘reddish brown’ (Mayrhofer 1982).

· Divine witnesses of Mitanni in the treaty CTH 51 between its ruler Šatiwazza and Šuppiluliumas of the Land of Hatti include “the Mitra-gods, the Varuna-gods, Indra, and the Nāsatya-gods” (Beckman 2016)

· Personal names with apparent Indo-Aryan etymologies survived accross a large territory, as far as Nuzi in the east and Palestine in the west.

An early letter from Tell Leilān in Northern Syria dating shortly before the end of Zimri-Lim’s reign in 1761 BCE (Eidem 2014) makes reference to mariannu, which could extend the Indo-Iranian linguistic presence in Syria back two centuries prior to the formation of the Mitanni state. The word is generally seen as a Hurrianised form of the Indo-Aryan word *mari̯a- ‘man/youth’ and taken to refer to a type of military personnel associated with chariot warfare across the Near East (Dassow 2008).

It is believed that the rise to power of an Early Indo-Aryan-speaking elite among a heterogeneous population might have given a mark of elite warrior-class identity to the language and names for dynastic succesors, which survived among certain groups during the Late Bronze Age.

Based on the presence of Mitanni Indic in the 15th century, and on the archaic language inferred from the Rig Veda and the Avesta, it is often assumed that Proto-Indo-Iranian may be dated to the centuries around 2000 BC.

· The evolution of *u̯ into *v- and the laryngeal loss in *u̯ŕ̥ˀnā must have happened at roughly the same time, given the differing outputs in both PIAr. and PIr. In the PII version of the fable, both traits are therefore left intact.

·For PII perf. part. *čákšuš< *kwékwkus- ‘looking at something’, cf. Ved.cákšuš-, with a shift in meaning to ‘eye’, similar to derivative in *-men-. More appropriate for the Post-PII stage seems to be the reduplicated desiderative forms in -s- PII *čaćsati < *kwéks-n̥ti, PIAr. *čáṭṣati, cf. OInd. cákṣate.

PII gen. pl. *-nām comes probably from the extension of feminine gen. pl. **-ā-ām (to distinguish it from the accusative), hence a Proto-Indo-Iranian innovation after the merge of vowels. Stems in -i- and -u- share a long vowel before the new ending, probably due to the generalised (previous allophonic) IE endings in *-ii̯-, -uu̯-, which is not found in genitives made in *-ām. In this precise case of *áu̯i-, the root shares an acrostatic paradigm with other LPIE languages.